


shelter my eyes from the sun

by arachnotherapy



Category: Victorious (TV)
Genre: Break Up, Creative License, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, jade just can't stop going to tori when she's upset huh, which sounds like a joke but listen. i have some issues with the writing and i am fixing them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-29
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2020-09-29 20:30:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20442083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arachnotherapy/pseuds/arachnotherapy
Summary: What happens when a couple of girls are only good at hating each other in theory.





	shelter my eyes from the sun

**Author's Note:**

> why yes, dear reader, that title IS the one lyric jade and tori both sing from the backhouse mike song Okay
> 
> (yes it was called "it feels oddly good to hurt" but i figured out the lyrics with okay and felt it held so much more weight)
> 
> i've never written any fanfiction before but i recently rewatched all of victorious and i have not been able to stop thinking about these two since, so clearly the next step was giving myself a reality in which they got the chance at being with each other they deserve
> 
> sorry if those tags are bad, like i said, i've NEVER written fanfic before and i'm doing my best

Just outside of the restaurant are throngs of people all making their way to and from work, home, bars, whatever evening activities they find themselves doing. Despite the settling of fall, nobody is wrapped up in layers for any reason beyond their fashion sensibilities. The sun hasn’t quite set, and even if it were properly dark out, this part of California never tends to get any colder than  _ a little warm _ . Cars indicative of the sort of people who tend to live in Hollywood move along slowly in the eight o’clock traffic, directed by crosswalks and stop lights and the occasional person who thinks more highly of themselves than the rules of the road.

Jade wonders how many more people are killed by reckless drivers than faulty lights and misplaced signs. Or maybe it’s the other way around. She wonders just how reckless and stupid someone would have to be to swerve an SUV directly through the big glass window. She wonders how fast and heavy it would have to be to kill her instantly.

“Jade,” says a voice, forcefully yanking her head out of the clouds. Or maybe it was in the gutter. She’s never been able to decide which suits her better.

Reluctantly, her gaze falls on Beck. There’s a heavy sadness in his eyes she isn’t used to. The jagged edge of his hairline strikes her as less attractive than it does dangerous. Funny how quickly the things we take comfort in can be turned on us. What isn’t funny is just how somber he looks. It’s not that it isn’t a good look for him (most of them are), but the Beck she knows is one always laid back and quick to brighten a room with just a smile. That Beck would be easier to deal with.

“What, Beck?” She snaps, light eyes set into a hard glare.

“Talk to me.”

“Talk to you?  _ Talk _ to you?!” She scoffs, the already too-quick beating of her heart changing tempo from a funeral dirge to war drums. “What the fuck do you want me to say, Beck? ‘Thanks’? ‘Have a nice life’? ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine, this three year relationship means nothing to me and we can still be best buddies’?”

People at a neighboring table turn to ogle curiously and are met with daggers from Jade’s eyes. They look right back to their food.

“Don’t be like that,” he sighs, eyes shifting to the table between them as his shoulders sag. Neither of them have made it very far through their respective meals.

Jade ought to shatter her plate over his head. She ought to break his nose. Black his eyes. Bloody his mouth. Jade West carries the reputation she does for a reason. The rational thing to do when she glowers threats and speaks violence is whatever she wants. After all, she’s proven multiple times that her words aren’t empty.

But those deep brown eyes have a way of seeing right through her walls of anger and brutality in a way that makes her truly feel vulnerable, and as much as she’d love to gouge out his eyes to keep them from doing that, she doesn’t. As she hasn’t a thousand times before. As she never will. She could never hurt Beck. The price she pays for being in love, she guesses.

“This just…” He starts, brows knitting together while he picks his words. “This isn’t working.”

“What about this isn’t working?” Jade tries for viciousness again, but finds her venom sacs empty. They’ve been together this long. That has to mean something. Doesn’t it?

And there Beck is, swooping in with his magical mind reading abilities, because nothing else can explain why he would scoot his chair forward to so gently set his hand on hers. Nothing else can explain how he knows precisely what she’s thinking.

“Jade, the past couple of years have been amazing,” and Jade is already rolling her eyes, although it has more to do with fighting back the sting of tears than how bitter she is. “And I don’t want you to think that this is your fault. Because it isn’t.” He stares right at her and she finds herself unable to look away, even to blink back the coming storm.

“You’re beautiful, and smart, and funny, and you’re my best friend. But I’ve been thinking.” His other hand joins the first. Despite herself, Jade clutches them both like she’ll fall apart if one of them lets go.

“We’re seniors now. I started thinking about Hollywood Arts and what comes after and I realized… So much is going to change. So much already has. I don’t know where anything fits, least of all my feelings. And I don’t want to lead you on when I don’t even think I feel the same way about you that I used to. You deserve better than that.”

_ It’s not you, it’s me. _

If anyone else had said that to her, she would have torn them apart, stuffed the pieces of their corpse, and strung them up in her front yard to ward away others. That said… it’s Beck. If there’s one thing she can be absolutely certain of, it’s that he doesn’t have any time or patience for being anything other than totally genuine as he’s always been. And that’s enough to do Jade in.

Beck lifts his hands to take her face in them, gingerly wiping away tears she hadn’t even noticed fall with the pads of his thumbs. Turns out she was right. She let go of his hands and she did start falling apart. The action brings them closer.

Jade kisses him. She kisses him abrupt and hard and fast and desperate, kisses him like it will make him stay, kisses him like it’s the very first and very last time she ever will, like that second part is especially true, and people are watching, and she’s still crying, but she can’t bring herself to care.

He kisses her just as hard.

* * *

Driving home is a silent affair. Beck picked Jade up, so Beck is dropping her off. The silent air between them is thick with tension, unspoken words, the awkwardness of driving home someone you just broke up with/being driven home with someone who just broke up with you. She could snip it with a pair of scissors.

It occurs to Jade that she could grab the wheel and swerve them into death via car wreck, or at least injury, but the thought comes with the half-hearted nature every other solution to this problem does. None of it matters next to the way her heart feels painfully swollen with misery. If she could only rip it out. Therein lies the problem, though, doesn’t it? This break-up  _ isn’t _ a problem. It’s the solution. Beck needs space. Jade needs  Beck to be in a mutually loving relationship.

At least he’s kind enough to hold her hand over the console.

They pull into her driveway, and Jade can’t help but see her house against the backdrop of a starry night sky as looming, prison-like in the dark and its assured loneliness. Beck puts the car into park. An eternity elapses between them, the only noise the running engine. Neither of them do a lot of looking at each other until Jade finally breaks the quiet.

“Well,” she says, looking and sounding like she might go on. She doesn’t. Instead, she opens the door. One foot is on the pavement when Beck squeezes her hand.

“Hey.” Jade turns to look at him, trying to pass as calm even with her puffy, red-ringed eyes.

“Whatever happens, we’re gonna be okay.” He works up a small smile for her, and it takes every ounce of her willpower not to throw herself at him again. She tries one last smile for him, and it’s not at all convincing, but nobody’s about to blame her for it. They squeeze each other’s hands one last time.

Jade steps out of the car and shuts the door to the sound of Beck telling her to get some rest and eat something. Arms crossed over her chest, she watches those red taillights drive down the street until they disappear down another road. It settles in all at once, like a leaky roof finally giving way over her head.

Her relationship with Beck is well and truly over.

Some small, logical part of her knows that the smart and safe thing to do is follow Beck’s advice. It’s good. She didn’t eat and she could do with a meal and some rest to clear her head.

But Beck just removed himself as a significant player in her life, and Jade isn’t one to cuddle up with  _ safe _ .

Instead, the next thing she knows is that she’s grabbing her keys off of the rack and speeding down the road.

Robbie and Andre are out of the question. Robbie is…  _ Robbie _ . Andre is nice, but terrified of her, and wouldn’t understand anyway. She can’t go to Cat either, seeing as that poor girl is about as intelligent as her namesake on a good day.

Which leaves only one more option. Jade groans loud and long to herself, to fate, to whatever deity thought this was a fitting punishment for her crimes. She hates that this is the second time this is happening, but that’s also exactly why it has to happen like this. Tori has already seen her at worst, and instead of taking the clear opportunity to be cruel, she was only kind. That, and the last thing Jade wants to do is embarrass herself in front of even more people.

So she goes the only place she can.

Jade West would rather crash her car through a restaurant window, killing her and her past self in a raging inferno of metal and heat and glass and brick than admit she needs Tori Vega, but that wouldn’t make it untrue.

**Author's Note:**

> voila! first chapter! i dunno if people usually use upload schedules for their multi-chapter fics but, while i have the major beats of this story mapped out, i have no idea how long it's gonna go, so. something like a chapter a week? maybe? would be ideal, but college is about to start and i am known for letting my hubris get the best of me, so fingers crossed, I Guess


End file.
